Songstress Solange Knowles brings her unique fashions to the March cover for Elle magazine and has a lot to say. Solange powerfully poses in all red, wearing a bright red Norma Kamali Sleeping Bag Coat with red Pleats Please pants designed by Issey Miyake.

With her current album, Seat at the Table making waves in the mainstream pool, Solange is proving she’s always been a force to reckon with. She shows no signs of slowing down with her recent reign on the cover of Elle magazine where she talked about everything from her growth as an artist, her big sister Bey, to raising her son Julez.

When asked about her latest project, Seat at the Table, which features the hit song Cranes in the Sky, she expresses that the last thing she wanted to have was an album that sounded like a generic political statement. “I did want to create this juxtaposition, politically, of having these very hard, messy conversations but having them stylistically in a way that you can really hear me, and not the yelling, the rage,” she says. Solange’s album is definitely making a statement, by becoming her first number 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart.

The songs are also a reflection of Solange’s songwriting capabilities. Growing up in a house with Beyoncé as her older sister definitely help build her own approach to songwriting. “My sister and Kelly [Rowland] were the same age, which is like a built-in best friend in the house; they were extremely close,” Solange remembers. “Writing felt like this insular thing that I could go back in my room and express all that I would observe, all the emotions that would arise. It felt like mine, my little thing.”

When it came to establishing herself as an artist, Solange experienced different challenges along the way that made it difficult for her to find her grove, especially during her time as a teen. She recalls the isolation and loneliness she experienced while raising her Julez in Moscow and Idaho, saying “…it was just Julez and me most of the time. It was hard to imagine being able to progress in my career in any way.”